China Clamps Down on Options for Children's
Name

4/21/2009-- The desire of Chinese parents
to give their children unique names is clashing with their government's
ambition to modernize the database of its people.

The Chinese government recently announced a plan to replace the current,
handwritten identity card with a computer-readable one. Embedded with
microchips, the new identity card is harder to forge but can be easily
scanned at airport security check points. But of 55,000 Chinese
characters, the computers can read only 32,252. As a result, about 60
million citizens whose names cannot be recognized by government
computers might need to change their names, The New York Times reported
Tuesday.